Saturday, February 26, 2011

Tournament bridge has been a passion of mine for a very long time – in college, I was one of those people in the dorm who would ambush anyone walking down the hall to be a fourth in some marathon game. But to everything there is a purpose, and a decade later, tournament bridge introduced me to my husband. (Not many people get their marriage announced in The New York Times’ bridge column!)

We put that passion on hold for many years while we raised our sons – the time and mental commitment was more than we felt we could give. And now that we’re retired, we are back on the tournament scene. But even at a bridge tournament, I can’t seem to get away from food and other foodies.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

My computer beeps at me for the usual variety of reasons – hello or goodbye, mail arriving, browser stops working, a program won’t load – that’s not news to anyone. But our house is only two years old, so most of the appliances operate with some sort of system that I’m sure the manufacturers believe is helpful. Some days, however, I go almost crazy trying to figure out which one of them is calling to me and why.

Consider:

– The washer beeps when the load is out of balance, like if I don’t put enough other stuff in when I wash the bathroom rug.
– Ditto the dryer. And both of them sing a little song when their cycle is over. You can hear it almost anywhere in the house.
– The microwave beeps when it’s done, and again every 10 seconds after that if I haven’t removed whatever I was heating.
– The coffeemaker beeps twice when it has finished brewing, and again 20 minutes later to tell me it’s turning itself off.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

I don’t always read the book. This time I didn’t even buy it. My book group picked The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, a 425-page tome that by many accounts is an enlightening philosophical treatise on Tibetan Buddhism. I looked it up on amazon.com, and after reading the five pages that were available with the “Look Inside!” feature, I felt as if I’d been transported back to the 1960s.

I know I sound shallow and closed-minded, but I believe that everyone doesn’t have to read every book we choose, and this was one I chose not to read. Instead, I caught up on my New Yorker backlog, and put in some quality time with Q is for Quarry, a Sue Grafton mystery I somehow missed in the run to her latest, U is for Undertow. They’re in a category I refer to as “brain candy.”